9of.us

I never wanted to learn anything about technology. If I had to learn to type and email to get by, so be it; but I avoided it like the plague when I could. As an artist, I had no use for anything that was not beautiful or imaginative or creative.

When our household decided to learn computer programming together, as the next step in taking Gadget-Land for Christ, I thought, well, if that’s what God is doing, I’m in- but this is gonna be enormously painful. I expected to be sapped of all my creative energy through dry technicalities.

On a late-night car trip back from Minnesota, Jeremy and I were in the front keeping ourselves awake with conversation. He started talking about programming, trying perhaps to encourage me in my technical education, and I tried hard to be as interested as he clearly was in the topic. Mid-stream, he suddenly changed the subject and asked me about what I had done with my music major in college. Though slightly weirded out by his abrupt shift, I began to explicate my thesis project, which was to compose several short pieces for various vocal/instrumental ensembles. Jeremy continued to ask about the composition process, so I went on to describe the long nights I spent sitting on a piano bench, alternating between dozing on the keys (really embarressing red marks) and feverishly solving musical problems. I usually started with a text and set it to music- so I had to figure out how to use the melody, the rhythms, the accompanying chords in such a way that it brought the text to life. It was hard work, involving a lot of technical music knowledge, but it was an exciting challenge for me. There’s not a right or wrong answer when you’re writing music, but there is stuff that works. And when it works, it’s glorious.

Somewhere in there, I realized that I’d been tricked. Jeremy likes tricking people (in a friendly manner) and had obviously planned that. It was pretty effective, too, gotta hand it to him. It finanally began to click with me why he liked computer programming so much. It’s fantastically creative! You type something onto a screen and it can create something magnificent: something functional and, if you’re good, something beautiful. When you want a program to do something, you use your technical knowledge and try to solve the problem, try and discover a way to do it. Not to get a right answer- no one has a single right answer when it’s complex- but to get to something that works. And when it’s constructed well, a website is an amazing thing. I’ve become convinced that Jeremy is a sort of magician- he casts a spell on his little laptop and out comes a brilliant program. It’s the same way I can write a piece of music, the same kind of process.

I hear that Fred Brooks and Donald Knuth are computer giants, and Christian men. Brooks says what I’m trying to describe a little more articulately: “The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

“Yet, the program construct, unlike the poet’s words, is real in the sense that
it moves and works. Producing visible outputs separate from the construct
itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The
magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct
incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things
that never were nor could be.”

Knuth says, “My feeling is that when we prepare a program, it can be like composing poetry or music… The possibility of writing beautiful programs, even in assembly language, is what got me hooked on programming in the first place.Some programs are elegant, some are exquisite, some are sparkling. My claim is that it is possible to write grand programs, noble programs, truly magnificent ones!”

So you get the idea. Suffice it to say, nothing short of a movement of the Holy Spirit could have convinced me to get into computer technology- but thanks be to God, his Spirit has led me here, into the One:Ten household of the People of Praise, and I’m learning about a whole new exciting realm of creativity- a new world, in fact, just opened up to me.

Glory!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 2:53 pm by Elizabeth and is filed under Uncategorized, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.